It's not that I dislike Apple products. Lord knows, between my wife and I, we certainly own a lot of them. It's not even that I dislike the people at Apple. I headed up a couple of projects there and still have friends who work for the company.

And it's not even that I dislike the Apple fans. After all, they're just fans. Well, except for a few crazy ones, but that's the case with all institutions that inspire fan loyalty.

No, what I have a problem with is Apple's reputation for flawless products and perfect execution.

It's not just that the fans believe it, it's that Apple tends to drink its own Kool-Aid. Whenever I bump into some new "gotcha" that Apple claims regular people can handle (or worse, claims it's their imagination), it just irks me.

Let's take this weekend's case of the Apple TV update. Saturday night, my wife and I sat down to watch a Star Trek: Voyager episode on Netflix. Yes, I have the coolest wife. She likes Star Trek. Anyway, we sat down to watch Voyager, and the Apple TV informed us it had an update. I said "No" because I just wanted to watch TV, not update another computer.

About 5 minutes into the program, the Apple TV insisted it had an update and this time, with a deep sigh, I pressed "OK". An hour later, the update hadn't finished. Finally, just before we went to bed, the Apple TV proudly announced that the update had failed. We never did get to watch our Voyager episode that night.

The next morning, I got up and did the usual. I unplugged the device, waited a little while, plugged it back in, and let it boot up. Then I tried running the update again. It didn't take an hour, but about 20 minutes later, it announced it had failed. I tried the whole process again, and this time got myself a second cup of coffee while waiting for the update to fail.

I decided to try one more time, with another complete power cycle, and this time I snagged the last slice of danish. And once again, the update failed.

Now, it was time to go to the Web. As it turns out, there was nothing by Apple about what was wrong, but a forum post turned out to have the answer. Are you ready?

Apparently, this update won't work on Apple TVs connected to the network by Ethernet. This update will only work on Apple TVs connected to the network over WiFi. Seriously. My house is wired with GigE in every wall (yeah, I did that!), and so I have my entire media center connected via GigE. We can pump full 1080p video across the house at speeds well in excess of anything even dual-channel 801.11n WiFi can handle.

My wireless network is also very locked down, so each new device needs to be registered with the router in a few different ways. In order to make the Apple TV talk to the wireless network, I had to go through an entire authorization sequence. There went another 20 minutes lost.

Finally, I had the Apple TV talking to the network over WiFi, ran the update, and it worked. This validated the forum claim that the update just wouldn't work on a wired connection. In any case, I then plugged the Ethernet cable back into the Apple TV, rebooted it again, and it's back online via my GigE.

Now, I just have to do this with the other two Apple TVs in the house. Joy.

What keeps getting to me is that while this was a trivial set of steps for a techie, for people like my parents, it would have been game over. It's almost impossible to explain to my parents how to configure a network, and if they had an Apple TV on a wired network (like their Tivo is), this bug would have simply rendered it useless until the next time I had a chance to visit them.

Last visit, I hooked up my dad's iPad to his iPad-ready Air Print printer. Since then, he did something and he can't print. He's now waiting on me to fix that, too.

My point is this: Apple, for all its popularity, is still not building devices that are trouble-free. They're also clearly not testing them out well enough, or the bug with wired Ethernet updates would never have happened.

Even with Apple products, real users still need hand-holding. And even with Apple products, bizarre technical problems and poor quality control can mess up the user experience.

In addition to hosting the ZDNet Government and ZDNet DIY-IT blogs, CBS Interactive's Distinguished Lecturer David Gewirtz is an author, U.S. policy advisor and computer scientist. He is featured in The History Channel special The President's Book of Secrets, is one of America's foremost cyber-security experts, and is a top expert on savi...
Full Bio

Disclosure

David Gewirtz is CBS Interactive's Distinguished Lecturer and writes the ZDNet Government and DIY-IT columns. On behalf of CBSi, its readers, and its partners, David produces and delivers webcasts, lectures, briefing papers, advisory statements, opinion pieces, and detailed analysis.
David has relationships with a variety of professional associations and nonprofit organizations. He is the executive director of U.S. Strategic Perspective Institute, a nonprofit research and policy organization. He is the cyberwarfare advisor for the International Association for Counterterrorism and Security Professionals. He is the IT advisor for the Florida Public Health Association, and an advisory board member for the Technical Communications and Management Certificate program at the University of California, Berkeley extension.
David is a member of the FBI's InfraGard program, the security partnership between the FBI and industry. David is also a member of the U.S. Naval Institute and the National Defense Industrial Association, the leading defense industry association promoting national security.
Technically, David is a government employee. He is employed by the State of California on behalf of the University of California, Berkeley extension, where he is a member of the instructional faculty and teaches object-oriented programming.
Many of David's projects find their way into ZDNet DIY-IT articles and are shared with readers worldwide. As part of David's project work, various vendors supply David with products, services, advice, and support. Whenever he discusses an offering from one of these vendors in ZDNet editoral, David makes sure to disclose any support he's received.
Aside from his equity stake in Component Enterprises, Inc., the firm that manages David's contracts and financial affairs, David holds no stock in any other entities. From time-to-time, David's holdings may include mutual funds or other financial instruments, but he has no direct visibility into the components of those funds or the companies they may invest in.
Component Enterprises also owns ZATZ Publishing, one of the first technology magazine publishers on the Internet. Today, more than 15 years of ZATZ archives remain online and the ZATZ technology sites update automatically with relevant news items of the day.
ZATZ is also home to David's research projects, where he has developed breakthrough technologies like the ZENPRESS enterprise content management system and the AI Editor, a dynamic content analysis and editing system based on innovative artificial intelligence algorithms and heuristics.
David is the author of a number of books, and receives royalties on books sales from a number of entities, including Amazon. David also provides his books free in digital form, as part of a grant to the U.S. Strategic Perspective Institute. When he mentions his books in editorial, he always provides a link to the free download location.
David believes strongly in disclosure and transparency, and if he establishes any further relationships or partnerships with parties relevant to ZDNet editorial, he will make sure to disclose them to his editors, and in his columns and here, in this document.